noun (pl. psychoses |-ˌsēz| )
a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.
There is a fine line between sanity & insanity: A large portion of the public is in denial about evolution, global warming, vaccination, etc. Most of this can be attributed to distorted views of reality, as defined by personality type. But only a few are driven to egregiously contradict well-established science when doing so cannot have any direct effect on their everyday life.
This page is dedicated to the many people who have occasionally drifted into my office, or sent me e-mail, or even mailed me their books, eager to tell me about their new theory, which they know will turn all known physics on its head, even though they have only studied an infinitesimal fraction of the latter. Some of them are just ignorant or naive, but are willing to learn; this page is not about them.
There is a distinction between "artistic" scientists & true quacks. The former have some bold new hypotheses (i.e., educated guesses) that have not completely confronted reality. (A former advisor of mine had a bumper-sticker-like sign in his office that went something like, "Your new theory is beautiful and elegant. Too bad it's wrong.") The latter have old ideas that have been fudged to try to reproduce some of the results of new ideas. (For example, anyone sticking to Ptolemaic epicycles after the advent of Copernicus & Kepler would fall into this category. Fairy tales are also old ideas.) Real quacks would not even make good science fiction authors.
On the other hand, there are also "pessimistic" scientists. They do not reject proven science, but refuse to consider new conjectures until they have been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Unfortunately, playing it safe seldom leads to new discoveries. ("Nothing ventured, nothing gained.") These also differ from quacks, who tend to reject proven science of much (if not all) of the 20th century.
Quacks (also known as "crackpots" or "cranks") have several well-known mental conditions in common with other conspiracy theorists:
- Paranoia: No one will listen to their self-contradictory claims; therefore there must be a world-wide web of conspiracy, lasting generations (apparently even between opposing sides through the World Wars & Cold War) to promote fantastic theories which, for some unexplained reason, seem sufficient for the design & operation of modern technology.
- Delusion/denial: For some unclear reason (religion? artistic taste? lack of ability or motivation?) they reject well-established science, & replace it with something of their own invention that they find more satisfying.
- Grandiosity: Their theory could never be wrong; therefore everyone else's must be. They want only to talk and not to listen. Their pride blinds them to their incompetence: They are not good con men; their arguments are unoriginal & transparently wrong to any expert.
- Projection: They accuse scientists of all of these obvious failings of their own, before their victims get a chance to respond. After all, it's only 1 person's word against another. (In common terms, this is known as, "He who smelt it, dealt it.") Thus, all established scientists are scientifically incompetent, ignorant, derisive, religious fanatics, mentally ill, etc.. It's a wonder that society has managed to advance @ all.
Quacks are dogmatists: Their point of view is a belief. A belief is something one assumes to be true because one wants it to be true. They only come up with "proofs" or "evidence" to sway non-believers to their belief. So you can waste your time disproving all their fallacies, but it won't matter to them, because they were invented only for you, & are totally irrelevant to their conviction.
It is easy to distinguish the quacks; although they may seem reasonable at first, they degenerate into absurdity progressively with any conversation. This is because quacks are organic forms of artificial intelligence: They would not pass the Turing test applied to a physics conversation. (This might be a good problem for a computer science student: Write a quack program, designed to sound as much like a true physicist as possible, then allow it to engage in a conversation with a real quack.) They simply copy and paste text & equations they have found in 19th century literature, introductory physics textbooks, or the web, none of which they understand well enough to pass a test in school. (A musical description of them can be found in the song "Swinging on a Star", especially the mule & fish parts.) Whenever questioned on any of their errors, they reply with repetition, non sequiturs, or insults. Eventually the true quacks make the same remarks, some version of almost all those listed below. Generally, their comments are of 3 types:
- "I have proven that special relativity/quantum mechanics/... is wrong."
You mean you did an experiment whose results disagree with the predictions of that theory? I didn't think so. You mean you proved it is self-contradictory? Not possible: Mathematically it's an elementary system, whose consistency is easy to check. You might as well claim that you can prove 2+2=5. (If you think you can do that, I'm willing to give you $2+$2 change for a $5 bill.) If you think you have found an inconsistency, you have probably made an assumption that is not implied by the theory. The fact is that these theories are not only well confirmed by experiment, but practical use is made of them every single day.Note: You will not dispell a quack's distaste for modern physics by relating it to classical physics, since they usually do not understand that either. This is an unusual example of "Familiarity breeds contempt."
Quacks seem to dislike modern physics literally because of the word "relativity": In their attacks, they focus on what is relative, not on what is absolute. They know special relativity says time is relative, but don't understand (or care) that proper time is absolute. In rejecting relativity, they replace it with the ether, rejecting even Galilean relativity, because they refuse to accept that even velocity can be relative. They know general relativity says reference frames are arbitrary, but don't know that it's curvature that displays the physics. They've heard that the uncertainty principle says there are things you can't measure, but don't know what you can measure. Apparently they view modern physics as an attempt to limit their personal freedom. Their egotism does not allow them to accept any frame of reference as equal to their own.
Consequently they are basically 19th century physicists, except for the fact that they don't understand even that. They focus on attacking the physics of the 1st quarter of the 20th century & its results, oblivious to the fact that it is backed up by all the dependent theories & results since then. They want to return to the "good old days", & constantly refer to archaic papers, as if history had anything to say about recent experimental results.
Thus quacks are in perfect agreement with the alleged statement of the Commissioner of the US Patent Office in 1899, "Everything that can be invented has been invented." So it's not surprising they reject ideas developed by someone while working @ the Swiss Patent Office a good several years later.
For those of you quacks who want to know what it's like trying to explain 20th century physics to someone like you, I suggest you go to this web site and try to explain 19th century physics to the people there.
- "But it's obvious nonsense!"
Then why does it work so well? - "You're wrong!"
That's just contradiction, not an argument. - "BUT I HAVE PROVEN YOU WRONG!!"
I already responded to that remark. And your caps lock key is stuck.
(Maybe you should use a bigger font.)Update: I have already been yelled @ with a much bigger font --- another prediction confirmed.
Attacks on established theories, based on distaste and fear
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